Train Travel

As a side note to Tim's great comment, be sure to book within 90 days of your travel. This should be in January sometime. If you try and book now, you might run into difficulties and not see your train opportunities. www.trenitalia.com updates their schedules in mid-December and travel dates as far out as April 2012 will not show properly. As Tim points out, go for the mini fares. You can print out the document at home. I say "document" because it doesn't look too much like a ticket. It will have a 6-digit PNR number on it. The conductors have wireless PDAs and can scan your PNR number to confirm while you are on board.

The best price is from the national rail site. Rail Europe is a travel agency and is rarely the cheapest ticket and never sells any of the discounted tickets. You can obtain via the web deep discount tickets for most routes but you are locked into that schedules and the tickets are non refundable should miss the train.

Thank You.
Are tickets easy to oblain for travel on the same or nest day, or should i prebook everything

In over 10 years of travel in Germany/Austria, the only time I ever pre-booked tickets (once) was when got a substantial discount (tickets worth almost €200, standard fare, for less than €60). You might want to pre-book the train from Verona to Munich. If you book early enough, that ticket can be €39/p. To put it in perspective, that advance purchase fare, with reservation, would be €41,50. Counter price with reservation, from German Rail anyway, would be €72,50. Rail Europe charges $105, which is €76.22 at today's exchange rate. I think RE is trying real hard to be competitive on this highly visible route. When I went from Cochem to Bad Harzburg, I paid €31,50 for a Sparpreis ticket with reservation. Walk up counter price, with reservation, would be €101,50. RailEurope charges $208 (€151). Not so competitive on less visible routes.

As Frank said, Rail Europe is never the cheapest. Booking in advance on national rail sites can save you money. The standard 2nd class fare for Genoa-Verona (one connection in Milan) is €36.50. If you make separate bookings up to 90 days in advance on the Trenitalia site for Genoa-Milan and Milan-Verona, you can get a Mini fare of €12.00 for the first leg and €13.00 for the second leg. The standard 2nd class fare for Verona-Munich is €68.10. As Lee said, if you book well in advance on the German Rail site, you can get a discount fare as low as €39.00. Discount fare tickets are for a specific departure date and time so be sure you can commit to them before booking.

The ONLY advantage to prebooking is the potential for discounts but the drawback is being locked into a non refundable schedule. European train rarely, if ever, fill up.

We travelled from Genoa to The Cinque Terre to Venice to Rome via the italian train system and we loved it. We bought our tickets as soon as we came to town; ie, for the Cinque Terre when we arrived in Genoa, etc. The only mistake we made was not asking for seats together, on the Euro Star Lines, and had to sit apart because of it until the next leg of the journey, then we knew enough to be specific about seats. One of our bigger problems was the stairs and boarding and unboarding with the luggage - that could be tough. We did find 2 stations that had an elevator and we really appreciated that. Never was the train platform on the same level as the door - we always had to go up and in some instances, the stairs leading to the train platform were almost 2 stories. But, we did manage and loved the days journey through the Tuscan countryside, or wherever. Have a wonderful trip and always remember to validate your ticket on your 1st train platform of the day - they do fine you very severely - always look for the yellow box. Good Luck.

A comment on validation. If you ticket specifies a particular car, seat, on a certain day - in other words, a seat reservation, then the ticket does not have be to be validated since it is only good for that train at that time on that day. If it is an open ticket that does not have a seat reservation or a specific day of travel then it needs to be validated. In Italy only the regional trains do not have reserved seats and only those tickets require validation. All other trains require a seat reservation and do not need to be validated.